Garcilaso was born into an aristocratic family that had been prominent in Spanish letters and politics for several centuries. Entering court life at an early age, he distinguished himself as a soldier, serving Emperor Charles V in Rhodes, Tunis, and Pavia. After a brief imprisonment in 1532 for conspiring to marry his brother’s son to a prominent lady-in-waiting against the emperor’s wishes, he was released into the service of the viceroy, the Marqués de Villafranca. Serving under the viceroy in southern France, he was mortally wounded in an assault on a fortified position and died several days later.

After writing poetry in rather conventional Spanish metres for a short period, Garcilaso had become acquainted with the poet Juan Boscán Almogáver, who quickly introduced him to Italianate metres, to the use of which he was further attracted by his close study of such Italian Renaissance poets as Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Jacopo Sannazzaro. Garcilaso was a consummate craftsman, and he transformed the Italianate metres into Spanish verse of high lyric quality. His most important innovations in this regard were the verse stanzas of the silva and liva (both using combinations of 7- and 11-syllable lines), which allowed him a new concern with the analytical expression of thought and emotion. Garcilaso’s major theme is the melancholy laments and misfortunes of romantic love as conventionally portrayed in pastoral poetry. He continually rewrote and polished his poetry, lifting his work high above that of his contemporaries and profoundly influencing the development of Spanish verse.

Garcilaso’s small body of work—38 sonnets, 5 canciones, 3 eclogues, 2 elegies, 1 epistle, and 8 coplas (songs)—was published with that of Boscán, by the latter’s widow, in 1543. These works were soon accepted as classics and largely determined the course of lyric poetry throughout Spain’s Golden Age.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen, Corrections Manager.